


It's In The Game

by weakinteraction



Category: Black Mirror (TV)
Genre: Episode: s05e01 Striking Vipers, Gen, References to player/player in-game sex, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-26
Updated: 2020-03-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23318986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/pseuds/weakinteraction
Summary: Downtime for the Striking Vipers characters.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: Worldbuilding Exchange 2020





	It's In The Game

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asuralucier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/gifts).



Tex walked towards Roxette, every step a deliberate thud on the rocky ground, his battered leather trenchcoat flapping behind him. His arms were held out tensely on either side as though he were about to draw the guns at his hips. They were just for show -- even such a despicable villain as Tex would never break the rules of Striking Vipers -- but it heightened the overall aura of aggression.

Roxette readied herself, holding up loose fists, bouncing back and forth on bended legs. The aggression in both of their stances belied the beauty of their surroundings -- the waterfall, the lush foliage, and the calm, placid sea so clear that you could see all the way to the turtles scurrying about on the bottom.

As Tex got closer, Roxette snarled in his direction. "I _hate_ you," she spat as he approached. "You killed my entire family to assure your supremacy over the closely guarded secrets at the core of the millennia-old Striking Vipers championship."

"And I hate you too," Tex drawled. "Your continued existence, in and of itself, represents the failure of all my meticulously planned schemes. I have already faked my own death for nefarious reasons three times, and yet I haven't even managed to kill you once."

Tundra raised his head, but it seemed only in order to make sure they could see him rolling his eyes. "Do you two have to do this _every_ time?"

"It's called being in character," Roxette said. "You should try it some time."

"I'm always in character," Tundra said. "I'm a polar bear. Look, this is me, being a polar bear."

Roxette put her hands on her hips. "You're _sunbathing_."

Tundra waved a dismissive paw, before adjusting the oversized reflector under his chin. "You think real polar bears wouldn't do this if they could? Just 'cos they're stuck in the Arctic ..."

The air blurred for a moment as Viktor rezzed in, clearly in a bad mood. "Single player mode is a joke," he said, storming straight off towards the temple.

"What happened?" Tundra asked sympathetically.

Viktor turned back. "I experienced along with a player as he played through my route," he said. "A mediocre player, at best. I had to help him a few times, even though he was on easy mode."

"Naughty boy," Roxette said lightly. The general agreement between the cast was that they didn't interfere with what individual players did when they decided to ride along, as they still weren't sure that TCKR knew about their independent existence, here in the central server. But it was a rule more honoured in the breach than the observance.

"So, what happened?"

"After all that work, he was only playing as me to get an achievement!" Viktor said huffily. "I was the very last character he had to finish. As soon as the little notification popped up, off he went, back into the real." He made a little disappearing-in-a-puff-of-smoke gesture with his enormous hands. "Done, cash in the merit points in the online store for a fancy costume for Roxette or something."

"Hey!" Roxette said. "I'm standing right here."

"It's not your fault," Viktor said. "You're not the player."

Roxette shrugged; he was right. "So he didn't stick around for the cut scene?" she said. "But that bit with the squirrels is so cute!"

"I know!" Viktor said. "I find peace with nature at the end of my righteous quest to pay my honour debt. But I couldn't find peace at all, I was so angry with that player for not being there. I feel _used_."

"I don't blame you, man," Tundra said. "But hey, you're here now; relax and enjoy it. I have Mai Tais." He raised his glass for emphasis.

Viktor was still fuming. "No, thank you," he said. "I will go and find another player."

"Don't deliberately sabotage them because of what the last guy did!" Tex said, turning it into a shout as Viktor rezzed away.

"See, if that's where being in character gets you," Tundra said, "I'll pass."

He settled back into his oversized sun lounger. Tex went for a walk down to the cliff edge and sat himself down. Roxette followed, dangling her legs over the side.

This place really was beautiful; the cast rotated the backdrop for their communal area through all of the available levels, but this one was a favourite with almost everyone. It was the dead of night in the parts of the world with the largest playerbases, so there were more server resources available to realise the environment; at times of higher server usage, they tended to switch to indoor environments, and they all had a permanent slight headache from their selves being pulled in so many different directions at once. Looking out into the sea, Roxette could see several of her fellow combatants enjoying the freedom -- going for long swims, barely paying any attention at all to goings-on in the game itself.

Tex curled his lip. "Viktor might have a point. The multiplayer modes get orders of magnitude more plays than single player."

"Is it really in character for a cowboy to use phrases like 'orders of magnitude'?"

"You're forgetting, my dear, I'm a cowboy who is also a criminal mastermind with gambits inside schemes inside plots inside . Of course I know about orders of magnitude."

"All that's a paper-thin justification for inconsistent writing in the earlier games and you know it."

Tex shrugged. "The earlier versions of me weren't self-aware."

"So far as we know," Roxette said quietly.

Tex shot her a glance -- the conversation was straying into dangerous philosophical territory. Roxette didn't care one way or the other if her earlier iterations had had the same sort of independent existence as she did -- she thought it unlikely, since their games hadn't been VR -- but some of the others got really freaked out about it. She hadn't thought Tex would be one of them.

"At least Viktor didn't go off into one of his conspiracy theory rants about how the game is dying," Tex said, trying to steer things back to a safer topic. Viktor's rants were a fairly regular occurrence, whenever too few players had selected him recently.

"I think his real problem is that people don't pick him in multi-, what with you having basically the same special move as him but easier to activate." Roxette smiled a little, to show that she was going along with talking about something else.

"Cowboy Beatdown is _nothing_ like Sumo Squash."

"Sure," Roxette said, sarcastically dragging out the vowel sound.

Tex took out a cigarette and put it lazily into his mouth before lighting it. "You want one?" he said to Roxette.

"It's so unfair that you get these as part of your standard inventory," Roxette said. "It's not like I have real lungs to damage."

"There have to be _some_ benefits to being a villain," Tex said.

She took the proffered cigarette and leaned in to allow him to light it. "I don't think you guys should be so down on single player. Fourteen thousand and fifty two people played to the end of my route this month," she said between puffs.

Tex sighed. "I haven't broken ten kay since the last sale. But then, you do get your tits out in that ending scene."

"It's very artistically done, I'll have you know." She took a deep drag. "Besides, they can just select me if they want to see all that and more."

Tex's face went blank as he accessed the database. "Huh. There are more than thirty seven thousand iterations of us fucking right now."

Roxette went into the same trance. "Sorry, honey, I'm fucking a couple of hundred thousand Lances. And nearly half a million Vespas."

"I won't take it personally," Tex said. "Players gonna play."

"I totally think we should be fucking more, though," Roxette said.

"Is that an offer?"

"What, you mean, _us_? Actual us?" Roxette laughed. "I just meant the players have no sense of discernment. Our backstory is excellent for all sorts of deliciously antagonistic scenarios. Or redemption arcs, I guess."

"I don't want to be redeemed," Tex said, but there was just a tiny bit of wistfulness in his tone. If he was upset that she'd turned him down, that was as much as he was going to show it.

"But I mean, Vespa and I are ... what, fellow contestants? We have, like, nothing in common really."

"Except for your breast size!" Tundra put in, unhelpfully. Roxette had suspected that he had been listening all along, but here was the proof.

"That was _one game_ where they used the same polygons," Roxette said. "Honestly."

"You were in a jacuzzi together in that cut scene in game five," Tex pointed out. "Anyway, how many of _yourself_ are you fucking?"

"About a hundred thousand," Roxette said. "A lot of players seem to think it's weird."

"Yeah, that's what's weird, fucking your friend when they're in the same body that you're inhabiting," Tundra said. "All the things these players get up to and that's the bridge they can't cross ..."

"How many of _your_ instances are fucking right now?" Tex asked, mock innocent. When listing off the people she was having encounters with, Roxette had been careful not to mention Tundra, but he was also well into six figures. She'd ridden along a few times, just to try to understand what players saw in it; it was certainly an _intense_ experience.

Tundra suddenly rolled off his sunlounger, knocking all his carefully arranged sunbathing paraphernalia aside. He bounded over before raising himself on his back legs, towering above them, and beating his chest. "How many times do I have to tell you?" he snarled. "We. Don't. Talk. About. That."

Roxette smiled up at him. "See?" she said. " _Now_ you're in character."


End file.
